I had to vote that overall, I’m more evil/bad, but nicer.
I no longer have nearly as much faith in humanity, and am far less likely to give the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps as a result of such things, I am generally (huge exceptions of course) nicer in my public ‘face’ because I can’t trust people.
Hello darkness my old friend…
I might be becoming a better person, hard to say.
But I think I’ve always been pretty good. Not perfect, but good.
This is exactly what i would do in the situation described. No muss, no fuss.
I’ve changed a lot, but I don’t know if it’s for the better or worse. I’ve become a lot more skeptical and negative about life and people and things - but that could be either healthy or unhealthy. I’m less likely to be generous than before, whereas in the past I got scammed a lot.
I’m no worse or better I’m just crankier.
I would point out to my friend that a professional exterminator would take care of the wasps for a lot less than what he was offering me.
Self-appraisals are always suspect, but I don’t think that I am any better or any worse, any nicer or any meaner, than I used to be.
We’ve done the gas fillup polls here before, and as before I couldn’t answer the questions, because it very much depends on prices locally vs. where I am going, as well as recent price trends.
In a falling market, I’ll delay adding any gas as long as possible, only doing 2-4 gallons at a time as needed short term.
In a rising market, I’ll top off early and often. When the post-covid price spike hit, I was able to anticipate each increase, and there was a post I made in the gas prices thread where it went up EIGHTY cents in one week, but I managed to get it topped off before all that happened.
Since I live in a state which does price cycling, I’ll be sure to top off before the next increase happens, typically on a Sunday (since they usually happen on Mon/Tue).
That’s my usual at-home strategies. For road trips I’ll scan the gas price map on Gasbuddy and note where I am going-on a recent trip to Georgia, I quickly noted where all the Buc’cees were, since they tend to be cheap to begin with and only have 30 cent spreads between grades (I use premium), so only filled up enough gas to get to the first one (in Kentucky). For an upcoming trip to New England, I spotted some very cheap premiums just over the border in NY state on I-90, so I won’t top off in Ohio unless the cycling just hit a valley before I leave.
Yup.
If I’m heading south out of NYState into Pennsylvania, half a tank will easily get me to cheaper prices. If I’m heading in other directions, I’d check first.
Prices must really pogo a great deal where y’all live. Around here the price at the cheaper stations never varies by that much. Yeah, I could drive 5 miles to fill up and save $0.10/gal. Whoopie, I just saved $1.40! And spent an additional 30 minutes of my time and went through more gas to get there and back.
Now I’ll admit, gas is cheaper in a neighboring state. But I’m not driving to Quartzite to save $14.
On trips that cross state lines there are sometimes large differences in price, especially if the taxes are very different in the nearby states. But yeah, otherwise, if i happen to be driving near the cheaper gas station i might fill the tank a little early, otherwise I’ll fill it when it gets low. Or at the start of a trip, so I don’t have to think about it.
For me, this is a big part of it.
I live in Cook County (suburban Chicago), where the combination of state and local taxes on gasoline is pretty high*. The most common road trip I make is to see my parents up in Wisconsin; unless I’m already pretty low on gas before I leave, I always wait to fill up until I get over the state line (and, preferably, until I get north of Milwaukee), as gas is at least 50 cents per gallon cheaper up there, and sometimes as much as a dollar cheaper.
*- Yes, I know, California and Europe say, “you call those high taxes?” 
Oh, yes:
[foiled by the “cannot embed” feature, again, sorry]
As you can see, upwards of 20 cents. The chart actually downplays the actual increase (which this past week had almost all stations going up in total Rockette lockstep to 3.69, +30 cents), because by the time all the correct reports actually come in and get updated (Gasbuddy requires quite a few correct reports before the new prices finally show up for a given station), a lot of stations already are trending back downwards. Annnd if you can find a real bargain before the jump, the de facto increase will typically be a LOT more than that (for me personally it was actually 60 cents).
I usually refill the tank somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2, depending on when I’m near a gas station I feel like using and not about to be late somewhere so I don’t want to stop.
I need gas, I get gas. I don’t pay close attention to prices. It’s not like it’s going to change my need to drive. I don’t swear over what might be at most a dollar difference for the entire tank. When the light comes on I get gas. For my current car that’s about 70 miles until empty. I’ve never come close to running out of gas. Sometimes if I have a long trip I’ll fill up before I go. I know I’ll have to stop somewhere along the way so it’s not like it saves me a lot of time to fill up before.
Only once in my life was I in a car that ran out of gas, and I wasn’t the one driving. In fact I was only 15 years old. The driver was my extremely frugal uncle, may he rest in peace.
oops, wrong thread
I did once, about 35 years ago. In my defense, my gas tank dented on something when I was off road, and as a result the gauge was off. I didn’t even know I was out of gas, as it was showing 1/4 tank. I was towed to a station, where the car worked perfectly because the towing sloshed the gas around enough. 100 yards down the road the car died again. Then, they discovered the problem.
I ran out of gas once, about 11-12 years ago (so i checked yes to one in ten years- close enough). It was a rental and the gas gauge was defective.
Whether I fill up before a trip depends on where I’m going. Not because of the price but because of the availability of gas stations. If I’m heading into an area with few or no gas stations for many miles, I’ll fill up before I normally would.
I think I only ran out of gas once. My wife had died a few days before Christmas, so I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I was going to pick up my son to spend Christmas together and the car suddenly stopped. I thought the gauge was not registering empty, but given my mental state I could have been wrong. It was also in an area with very poor cell service, so when I called AAA it took like 15 minutes to convey my situation and AAA number to the agent. I had the car towed to the dealer for service because I thought something was wrong with it. The dealer called me the next day and said, “your problem is your car is out of gas”. Very embarrassing on top of being a huge hassle.
The death of somebody that important to you can definitely put you mind out of gear for some time afterwards – including that it can be out of gear in a fashion that makes it hard to tell how far out of gear it is.
That can very definitely be an issue.
Back in the mid 1970’s a friend and I were driving out west. We knew we’d be going through an area where gas stations might be thin on the ground, so we pulled out a map, looked at the towns shown along the way which were scattered some significant distance apart, and said OK we’ll stop at X for gas (I no longer remember any of the names) and that should give us both plenty of leeway and plenty of gas to get from X to the next sizeable city area.
We weren’t prepared for X to have no gas station. There was a town where the map said there was a town, all right; but there was barely any town there at all.
Y didn’t have a gas station either. Neither did Z. We were pretty close to fumes when we saw – aha! a gas station in the fourth place up.
Which was closed for the night (it was maybe 6 or 7 PM.) But there was a sign saying if you really needed gas you could go get them from the house and they’d come out and pump gas for you – for an extra charge. We didn’t really have another choice, other than staying there until the place opened in the morning; so we took it. I remember being shocked at the price, though I’m pretty sure it was less than a dollar a gallon.
– I’ve run out of gas on a tractor, but I didn’t think that counted. I didn’t need to get the tractor to a gas station, I only needed to walk to the barn, get a gas can, put some in it from the farm tank and schlep back out to the tractor. They’re old tractors, the gas gauges don’t work, and I’d thought somebody else had filled it up the night before but they hadn’t.